It was decided decades ago, perhaps even almost 100 years ago. The United States population did not wake up a few years ago and say, “Hey, we want to redefine…

It was decided decades ago, perhaps even almost 100 years ago. The United States population did not wake up a few years ago and say, “Hey, we want to redefine marriage.” We have been living the redefinition of marriage for much longer.

Some will point to the 7th Lambeth Conference in 1930, whereby the Anglican Church allowed for the use of birth control by married couples. Soon after, many other Christian denominations followed suit.

Fast forward to 1968. One year before the summer of love, Pope Paul VI published his encyclical Humanae Vitae, which set forth the Catholic Church’s unchanged teaching – contraception had been and was still inconsistent with the married vocation. However, many people, lay and clerical alike, had expected a different response from Rome. Regardless of the content of the encyclical, they started to live as if the Church had in fact approved the use of contraception, for everyone, not just married couples.

Christians of all types had chosen to ignore Church teaching of almost 2,000 years.

1968 also gave us the SCOTUS decision Griswold v. Connecticut, which ruled that married couples had a right to have access to contraception. For all practical purposes – in law, religion, and practice – sex had been separated from marriage and procreation. Marriage had been separated from procreation and maybe even sex. The fundamental definition of marriage had changed. Even though the very word “matrimony” derives from the Latin word “mater” [“mother”], marriage was being lived as if it wasn’t about a creating a safe space for children and their mothers and fathers.

In her book Call the Midwife, Jennifer Worth, observed the effects of the pill in the London neighborhood where she worked:

The Pill was introduced in the early 1960s and modern woman was born. Women were no longer going to be tied to the cycle of endless babies; they were going to be themselves. With the Pill came what we now call the sexual revolution. Women could, for the first time in history, be like men, and enjoy sex for its own sake. In the late 1950s we had eighty to a hundred deliveries a month in our books. In 1963 the number had dropped to four or five a month. Now that is some social change!

That is some change, indeed. Perhaps it accounts for the logical separation of children from sex and marriage. After all, our personal experiences do shape our thinking.

Recall, it wasn’t so long before the widespread acceptance of contraception that many states had laws about common-law marriages. For example, some states considered an unmarried couple who checked into a hotel room together to be common law wedded…because sex had something to do with children and society thought that the children who might be born of a sexual union had a right to the stability of the marital union of their parents. Such a thought looks archaic now when more than 40% of births are to single moms and parenthood outside of marriage has become a celebrity factor.

I’m not convinced of the efficacy of laws governing common law marriages, but I do think they point to an underlying reality about sex…

Common-law marriages were countered by the increasing availability of no-fault divorce throughout the 20th century. It also facilitated the sexual revolution. As a common practice it gained traction in 1969 (the year of the summer of love) and mowed down thousands if not millions of families in the 70s and 80s, and well beyond.

We have had decades of living marriage as if children were not an essential part of it. This has nothing to do with infertility; this is about people consciously impeding sexual intercourse from it’s not infrequent end. The end of sex became the orgasm, not the child or even the union.

The Catholic Church proposes a context for sex in which the orgasm was not just something experienced on the physical level, but also on the spiritual, emotional, and psychological levels. It was supposed to be a physical experience indicative of a procreative love that would increase not only the love of the spouses for each other, but the numbers of people who would be part of the communion of love.

Think about it. From a Christian perspective, sex is not about replacing the population and hoping there’s someone to pay your social security or wipe your bottom when you’re old and incapacitated. Woman and man existed as sexually differentiated beings from the beginning, before original sin. They were told to go forth and multiply before death, the consequence of sin, existed.

Made in the image and likeness of God, the original husband and wife were invited to be cooperators with God. They were invited to spread and increase love. In fact, Aquinas argues that the physical pleasures of sex (e.g. orgasm) would have been greater before original sin. The difficulties and sufferings associated with marriage and children were not part of the original plan for humanity.

Additionally, for millennia, differing cultures and religions have recognized a distinction between procreative sex and non-procreative sex. The former deserved social and political protection because of the potential of a child. The latter, while certainly not unknown, was never seen to require that kind of protection; in and of its nature, it could not produce a child even if deeply desired.

But things change, don’t they? Everyone who woke up this morning to the news that SCOTUS declared same-sex marriage a right, had already been immersed, if not an actual participant, in societal practices which separated children and permanent commitment from marriage.

The redefinition of marriage as formalized today in Obergefell v. Hodges was only a logical – even a “natural” conclusion – of how marriage has been lived already.

So what’s next? Well, if you want to restore marriage to its original meaning, start with living it and helping others to live it. Married people haven’t done the best example of witnessing that this kind of love is even possible. And those who try, frequently don’t receive the support they need.

Obergefell is the new Roe. There will be more legislative and court battles. But the most effective tool will be to live and support marriage and family according to our state in life. That witness, if lived by enough people, will become the new-new-normal. Christianity itself evidences the impact of personal witness.

Then, move on to Fr. Raymond De Souza’s, “Laudato Si: The Cheers and the Challenges.” He gives a good analysis of how different interest groups will respond. He points out an aspect that some will see as a challenge, others as a weakness.

Laudato Si therefore explicitly is aimed at a comprehensive global climate change treaty. That’s very significant, as its endorsement of climate policies meshes with the priorities of the global progressive elite. This means that when Pope Francis arrives in Washington, President Obama will claim that no recent U.S. administration has had policies more in line with the priorities of the Holy See. To be sure, the Holy Father notes that natural ecology cannot be separated from human ecology, and therefore authentic care for the environment is incompatible with abortion (120) or approval of homosexual unions (155).

Technique and technology are not problems in themselves. The problem comes when they fill humanity’s intellectual horizon and moral imagination to the exclusion of all other considerations. For then everything tends to get instrumentalized, including human relationships and the human relationship to the natural world — and when everything is instrumentalized, everything is also brutalized.

In his challenge to all this, Francis, with John Paul II, insists that “we must safeguard the moral conditions for an authentic human ecology,” understanding that integral human development, in both the developed and developing worlds, is not measured by GDP alone, but by humanity’s growth in beatitude.

As I skim the document and review these articles, I’m also preparing to teach a session on St. John Paul II’s Letter to Families for the intensive graduate course I’m leading this week. (You may still be able to sign up for the Distance Ed part of the course which starts in July.) And it’s clear that Pope Francis has not lost sight of core Christian anthropology. Surely, this encyclical will influence policy, but he hasn’t lost sight of the order of creation and the centrality of the human person, not to mention the family.

We live in a soundbite world. Of that, there is no doubt. Before, during, and after the Extraordinary Synod on the Family last year, the question of whether the divorced…

We live in a soundbite world. Of that, there is no doubt. Before, during, and after the Extraordinary Synod on the Family last year, the question of whether the divorced and remarried can receive the sacrament of Holy Communion was and continues to be passionately debated.

Sadly, too many Catholics, including some clergy, rely only on the headlines and soundbites to inform themselves and the result of the debate has been growing confusion that somehow the Church has changed it’s teaching on a very fundamental and important issue.

This week, Raymond Arroyo of EWTN’s The World Over did us all a favor in his interview with Cardinal Kasper, one of the main proponents of the proposal to allow some divorced and remarried couples to receive Communion. Over at the National Catholic Register, Arroyo offered excerpts of the transcript of his interview with the Cardinal. Read his entire piece

ARROYO: But you do understand, when a Churchman like yourself, a theologian, an esteemed international figure, a Curial official says: “Here is my proposal, and the Pope agrees with me” that does cause some …

CARDINAL KASPER: Well, this I did not say.

ARROYO: Well you did say, and the quote is: “Clearly this is what he wants,” and the Pope has approved of my proposal. Those were the quotes from the time …

CARDINAL KASPER: No … he did not approve my proposal. The Pope wanted that I put the question [forward], and, afterwards, in a general way, before all the cardinals, he expressed his satisfaction with my talk. But not the end, not in the … I wouldn’t say he approved the proposal, no, no, no.

Here’s the full episode. It’s well worth your time, particularly if you’re weighing in on this debate.
The Cardinal says that the Pope wanted to open the debate. I couldn’t agree more. Last year I wrote that the Pope sort of arranged a pre-Synod. He knew (we all knew) that there’s a lot of confusion surrounding the issue of marriage. In fact, I’m grateful for the debate. It’s brought forth greatly needed clarity on the teaching. Now, it’s a matter of continuing to clarify and teach so that the confusion is dispelled, a major task set before all of us.

Meanwhile, many thanks to Arroyo for his excellent and respectful interview, as well as to Cardinal Kasper for his willingness to openly discuss his perspectives. I really appreciate the tone in which they engaged each other, a great reminder of how this debate should proceed. Just remember, in his own words, the Cardinal has clarified that Pope Francis has not approved his proposal.

What are you doing this summer? Vacation? Sounds good. But what about a graduate course on Christian Marriage? After all, marriage is a pretty hot topic these days. Plus, we’ve…

Photo by Pia de Solenni. Detail of the fragment of a Christian tombstone for a deceased spouse. Santa Maria in Trastevere.

What are you doing this summer? Vacation? Sounds good. But what about a graduate course on Christian Marriage? After all, marriage is a pretty hot topic these days. Plus, we’ve got the World Meeting of Families coming up, not to mention the Ordinary Synod on the Family in October.

Are you ready?

I’ll be teaching this course for the Augustine Institute in Denver, along with the esteemed Dr. Edward Sri and Lucas Pollice. Lest we rest in theory, we’ll be joined by marriage coaches Matt and Mindy Dalton, as well as Greg and Julie Alexander.

You can take the course in person in Denver from June 15-19. Or you can sign up to take it as a distance ed student, meaning that you’ll have access to the videos, discussion, and coursework via an online platform. The distance ed course will run July 6 – August 14. The syllabus for the course is here. For more info on the course, email our Registrar, Kristi Logan, at kristi.logan@augustineinstitute.org.

On Monday, the new Vanity Fair cover introduced us to Caitlyn Jenner, formerly known as Bruce Jenner – husband, father, Olympic athlete, reality tv star. There’s been all sorts of conversation about…

On Monday, the new Vanity Fair cover introduced us to Caitlyn Jenner, formerly known as Bruce Jenner – husband, father, Olympic athlete, reality tv star. There’s been all sorts of conversation about the idea that Caitlyn is Jenner’s real self, that Jenner is finally being honest.

I’m not going to question the validity of Jenner’s choice. I just want to have a real and honest conversation about her debut image. Just the magazine cover. Here are three initial thoughts –

Does she look like a 65 year-old woman? Nope. She doesn’t even look anything like the 65 year old woman who is taking her picture. She is a highly sexualized creation, such as are produced by Hollywood, Photoshop, cosmetic surgery, porn and so on. Katrina Fernandez comments, “It’s pantomime. Sexist black face.”

The hyper sexualization indicates the manipulation of women – the idea that women have to have certain proportions in order to be “feminine.” What about real women?(Cue the Dove campaign.) Women who have lost their breasts to cancer? (Megan Heimer makes a good case, arguing that cover photo has objectified women everywhere.)

It takes more than hormones, breasts, surgery, and heavy makeup to be a woman. A lot more. But the cover photo suggests that a woman’s identity is based on whether she’s able to arouse a man.And it’s not original in that regard.

Now, there’s a lot of manipulation going on here – Caitlyn Jenner’s image, our ideas and notions of women and beauty, but also the manipulation of men.

Source: VanityFair.com. Used under the fair use principle since it is the specific subject of commentary.

Caitlyn is sitting on her hands so you can’t see them. Why? Because they are probably a dead giveaway that she is not exactly a woman, despite the trappings.

But there’s more. No pun intended.

She’s sitting. If she were standing, it would be a lot harder to hide or Photoshop her male anatomy, a male part of her that she’s not ready to give up yet because it’s “useful” as she explained to Diane Sawyer in the ABC interview.

In the very coming-out photo, Caitlyn is hiding. She’s not honest about who she is. She doesn’t even look like a normal woman of her age, much less who she actually is.

Most men wouldn’t be attracted by her image if she were standing. Full monty. Hands showing. Too many signals that she’s not a woman, at least not the type that they would normally be attracted to.

She’s also bound by a corset, the item that was considered by many feminists to indicate female bondage and domination by patriarchy. The corset made women conform to an ideal that was not real. As an image, it may be sexy to some; but it’s also terribly constricting, not liberating in the way that we are being told this decision has been for Jenner. The liberation of the second wave feminists included the physical liberation of the female body. Jenner was around when women were burning their bras…

Now, back to the hands. They are hidden. And the legs are cut off. Except for the slightly vacant come-hither look, she might as well be Man Ray’s limbless and headless VenusRestored. (Below)

And so it ended. Two weeks ago, the Mad Men finale aired. And – spoiler alert – Don Draper didn’t hurl himself out of the window of a Manhattan skyscraper, even though he did…

And so it ended. Two weeks ago, the MadMen finale aired. And – spoiler alert – Don Draper didn’t hurl himself out of the window of a Manhattan skyscraper, even though he did have a few desperate glances out of windows in some of the last episodes.

The series tended to generate two extreme reactions. Either people really liked the show or they had no patience for it – too dark, too retro, too whatever. I found the show dark, even disturbing at times; but I kept watching. The production quality was fantastic – story, writing, acting, costumes, directing, filming, etc. (Still, the finale was outpaced 2:1 by people viewing reruns of I Love Lucy.)

Over at Crux, Kimberly Winston suggests that maybe Don Draper got religion at the very end of the show. Zach Hoag sees redemption for many of the main characters, especially Don, he writes:

But this time, it’s not about “selling happiness” to enrich himself, fulfill his lusts or make his mark. It’s about being close to his children. It’s about finding his true identity in loving and being loved.

Art, in any form, has to allow for various interpretations. We see things through different experiences and perspectives. I recall a conversation with friends about Henry James’ novel, Portrait of a Lady. Three of us had vastly different understandings about the conclusion. Naturally, I was convinced I had it right; so I consulted the text. Based on the author’s own words, each of us had a legitimate interpretation. I was right. And so were the others.

No, no, no. I’m not saying that everything is relative. But interpretations of art certainly can be.

So let me offer my take on Mad Men. I wanted to see redemption, desperately. Once Don had his breakdown with Hershey, I thought we were getting somewhere. After six seasons, two wives and too many “other” women to count, Don actually told something deeply intimate about himself which was also true.

The episode concludes with Don standing with his children before the rundown building that was the whorehouse where he grew up. This is the first time they’ve seen anything of their father’s past. It helps to know who someone is by knowing where they came from.

I began to think that his redemption would conclude the series. Remember how the first episode of season one started? All we saw was a handsome businessman going about his day, visiting a woman who was not his wife, and so on. There was no indication that he was a married man until the episode concluded with him entering his large suburban home at night, lights turned out, wife asleep in bed.

In many ways, his struck me as a Pinocchio story, someone sort of wanting to grow up and be a “real” boy while enjoying all the fun and perks of being “naughty,” an echo of St. Augustine’s prayer for conversion when he asked that it might not happen too quickly. Throughout the last season, there were inklings that maybe the real man would escape the trappings he’d created for himself, not unlike the false world he created through his business of advertising, promising happiness with things that have nothing to do with true happiness. But along the way, someone else was changing: his teenage daughter Sally.

Episode two of Season 7, involves Sally’s discovery that her father has, in effect, been lying to his family by not telling them that he’s on leave from his job. They think he’s still going to work, as usual. After a strained car trip that eases up with a pit stop for gas and food (Don is smart; he knows that a lot of relationship building can happen around food.), she gets out of the car and tells him, “I love you.” He can’t, simply cannot, respond. It’s clear that he’s struggling. Go to 1’20” here. Or watch it all for a recap of the episode. By this point the series has offered plenty of encounters between Sally and her mom Betty. None of them were personal. And we’ve seen various scenes with Sally and her dad, mostly she’s angry, even disgusted. Always she is looking for connection. This time she connects.

Someone is growing up.

While Betty accepts her mortality and the reality of her terminal diagnosis, she still can’t relate to her children. She can’t even tell them that she is dying. The last we see of Sally, she has given up her trip to Madrid, ignoring her mother’s expressed wishes, and has come home to help. We see Betty smoking while Sally is doing the dishes. (0’99” below)

The series concludes with Don chanting his “om” outside at a beautiful California retreat, presumably in the Big Sur area, and fades into the famous Coke commercial, “I’d like to give the world a Coke.”

Pinocchio stayed Pinocchio.

In the moment that some call awakening or getting religion, I think he was just being the same old Don Draper we’ve seen since the very first episode. At 2’0” below,just as the meditation begins, he’s still trying to figure it out, how’s he going to make this work for him. Then his “om” becomes an “a-ha!” (See 2’37” below, when the meditation ends.) Think about it, after his “confession” to Peggy, she tells him to come back, that he’ll have work, there’s the Coke account. In that moment, he tapped into the next big idea. And presumably many other big ideas, including the Coke commercial.

Maybe Don’s a little more in touch with himself after crying and hugging on his retreat. But it’s hard for me to string this all together and claim redemption, much less family man. He starts as an ad man and ends an ad man, he can sell anything including himself. He doesn’t just sell ads. He creates realities.

As for the other characters, they seem pretty comfortable in the realities that they’ve created for themselves. But, really, does anyone honestly think that Pete has magically learned fidelity…when he now has a private jet at his disposal? We saw what he did with his own apartment… And Roger just continues being another little boy Pinocchio, he even jokingly refers to his new wife Marie as “ma mère” (“my mother”). Peggy finally got what she wanted: a man to go with her career. That may not last if her inner Don Draper surfaces again.

Joan was the exception, she was an adult from the beginning and always aware that actions have consequences, good and bad. She always took responsibility for herself. But the real grown up by the end of the show was just a little girl when the show began. Make sure you take note around 0’99” below.

Over at the CatholicCompany.com, Gretchen (a blogger whom I don’t know) posted some great advice for men and their marriages. I know, I know. Men don’t always like to be…

Photo by Joshua Earle at Unsplash.com

Over at the CatholicCompany.com, Gretchen (a blogger whom I don’t know) posted some great advice for men and their marriages. I know, I know. Men don’t always like to be told what to do by a woman. In her defense – and mine! – she’s just passing along the advice of one of the [male] Doctors of the Church, St. John Chyrsostom. And, it’s actually in the Catechism (CCC 2365). You should check out her post and the meme she created, but here’s the highlight of St. John’s advice for men to say to their wives –

I have taken you in my arms, and I love you, and I prefer you to my life itself. For the present life is nothing, and my most ardent dream is to spend it with you in such a way that we may be assured of not being separated in the life reserved for us. . . . I place your love above all things, and nothing would be more bitter or painful to me than to be of a different mind than you.

I’ve long thought that there was something missing from St. John Paul II’s pontificate: he never wrote much about men, masculinity, and fatherhood. Sure, there are some things in his prior writings and certainly some mention in his Theology of the Body, but there’s no Letter to Men or Vires Dignitatem (cf. Mulieres Dignitatem – On the Dignity and Vocation of Women). Some will answer that he wrote Pastores Dabo Vobis, but that’s a document about and for priests. No doubt clear teaching on men, masculinity, and fatherhood would be helpful for priests as well as for other men.

In my work on Mulieris Dignitatem, I started to wonder, if mothers have sort of a primary relationship with children on account of biology (they do spend 9+ months in a woman’s body…), perhaps the special role of men is to be the primary caretaker of the marriage. Perhaps.

St. John Chrysostom’s words above mean nothing if they are not lived, if a husband does not make the choices and take the actions to live them.

I’ve noticed anecdotally that where men are committed to the marriage, not just being passively carried along in family life, that the marriages are different and better. The wife is happier. So are the children, if the couple is blessed to have children. And the husband is happier.

There’s a statistic – I don’t have it handy but you have the mighty interweb at your finger tips – that children are about 20% likely to follow the family’s practice of religion if it’s led by the mother. If led by the father, that number jumps to something like 80%. All those moms are wonderful, good women who are trying their best, I’m sure. But it’s not enough.

And it’s not enough to approach marriage by laying the responsibility of home and hearth at the woman’s feet. The man has to be the leader in the marriage. He has to be the man who says and acts as St. John Chrysostom recommends. I’ve never seen it work well any other way. Feel free to disagree if you like, that’s what the com-boxes are for below.

In some ways, I think women have a role that’s more natural in a biological consideration. But then, to protect her children and herself, she assumes more leadership roles in the family if there is a void where her husband ought to be.

Then, there’s the line that I’ve heard pastors/priests omit because they are afraid of the repercussions –

Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord.

Which gets worked out as “Wives be submissive to your husbands.”

First of all, go with a good Catholic translation. After all, the Bible comes from the Catholic Church. With all due respect to our Protestant sisters and brothers, they have edited the Bible at times. If you want the real deal, read a Catholic version. If you want an abridged and edited version…well, there are many Protestant versions out there. Pick one and enjoy.

But St. Paul isn’t telling wives to give up their wills or that their husbands should be the dictators of the house, that wives have no voice in the leading of the family. He qualifies it,

…as to the Lord.

And the Lord doesn’t require us to become servile and submissive. In fact, he calls us friends. He lays down his life for his friends. He tells us that his Father will love us as the Father loves Him. (I’m still trying to wrap my head around that!) We are made his siblings in baptism!

Speaking of laying down one’s life, the next line in this section on husbands and wives has some pretty strong words for husbands,

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her

If you’re wondering what that means, look at the crucifix.

That looks a lot harder than “being subordinate to the Lord.” I think wives need to realize this sacrifice and be a help (not a hindrance) to their husbands. But it’s the husband who has to love his wife as Christ loved the church. And that is huge. The Church did not go to Christ and say, “You know, you need to lay your life down for me.” The Church didn’t even exist yet.

But St. Paul doesn’t stop. Again, he indicates the primary initiative of the husband, citing Genesis 2,24:

For this reason a man shall leave [his] father and [his] mother

and be joined to his wife,

and the two shall become one flesh.

It’s the husband’s initiative to leave his parents so that he can be joined to his wife. Sure, the wife is going to leave her parents, too; but Scripture and St. Paul are clearly placing the emphasis on the male initiative.

I’m very excited to announce one of my new projects as Associate Dean of the Augustine Institute’s Orange County campus. While we haven’t – yet – arranged for Pope Francis…

Photo from Diocese of Orange event flyer.

I’m very excited to announce one of my new projects as Associate Dean of the Augustine Institute’s Orange County campus. While we haven’t – yet – arranged for Pope Francis to visit the west coast during his visit to the US in September, we are launching a quarterly lecture series with the Diocese of Orange.

Dr. Jonathan Reyes, the Executive Director of the USCCB’s Department of Justice, Peace, and Human Development will be our first speaker next Thursday, May 21. He’ll be speaking on the social vision of Pope Francis, a topic that’s exciting not only in terms of Francis’ pontificate to date but also in light of the upcoming encyclical on the environment.

If you’re in the area, please do attend. It’s a free event, just RSVP here.